Catastrophism news

I'm getting dizzy but it seems that a few days ago the Firestone et al hypothesis was on the ropes, even bent forwards on its knees, but now it seems it might bounce back - with a vengeance. At http://cosmictusk.com July 6th in a post by George entitled 'Swiss Kiss: Nanodiamonds and Iridium independently confirmed at Bern INQUA session on Younger Dryas climate crash' - so the hypothesis still has legs and is walking, it would seem - in spite of all the negativity over in the US.

At http://cosmictusk.com/a-personal-essay-from-vance-holliday-on-the-clovis... is another nail in the coffin of the comet impace theory at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. It looks more and more like they rushed into press without fully weighing up alternative ideas. Claim and counter claim has become a problem and the theory has one glaring problem that it can't get around - the Younger Dryas event was a carbon copy of the Older and Oldest Dryas events and half a dozen Heinrich events that took place over the last 70,000 years (conventional dating).

Ravindra Godbole was inspired to write about the Birth of Indra after reading Uriel's Machine by Knight and Lomas, two writers rather than scientists (Arrow Books:2000). This was in fact a piece he wrote prior to the book. Both can be downloaded or read online at www.themeaningofvedas.com - you can access the Birth of Indra at the bottom of the table of contents of the book. In Uriel's Machine it is said a comet struck the earth around 9500 years ago, a date otherwise unassociated with a catastrophic event.

George Howard, at http://cosmictusk.com June 8th has been investigating the smeer against Allen West, the geologist at the centre of a controversy over his ability, credentials and an alleged criminal record. He was accused of being a criminal and imposter, or as George Howard puts it, a charlatan, by an ex-Nature journalist, Rex Dalton, on a blog posting. It seems that his so called criminal record does not actually exist. Not only that.

At www.velikovsky.info/Isaac_Vail there is a brief mention of the man. I came across him many years ago when I took out a year's subscription to Donald Cyr's StonehengeViewpoint magazine under the false impression it would be all about the stone circle. Instead, the water canopy theory of Isaac Vail was the main focus of articles - and Stonehenge played a very minor role. Basically it involved the earth being girdled by a doughnut looking structure of ice crystals - the firmament of Genesis 1:6-8.

At www.miller-mccane.com/science/comet-claim-comes-crashing-to-earth-31180/ ... it seems that Allen West, one of the co-authors of The Cycle of Cosmic Catstrophe and various articles on the YD impact hypothesis, is not a qualified geologist. It seems most of the initial field work behind the comet came from Allen West - and not by Richard Firestone or Warwick-Smith, and the suspicion is that he falsified the record.

Velikovsky, on the first page of his book, Earth in Upheaval (Victor Gollancz:1956) made some extraordinary claims of the so called Alaskan 'muck' deposits in the Tanana River valley, a tributary of the Yukon River - but where did he get his information from? He quotes Rainey (1940), University of Alaska, and FC Hibben (1943), University of New Mexico, but he obviously read a lot of other sources. One of them might have been Ralph Tuck, a geologist who first worked in Alaska on the railroad and then worked for a mining company - in which muck played a prominent role.

Alternative sky serpents include enhanced aurorae (as advocated by Rens van der Sliujs on www.mythopedia.com ) or comets (Clube and Napier used this idea in the title of their book, The Cosmic Serpent, Faber and Faber:1982). Whereas the jet streams are associated with atmospheric phenomena (storms, weather patterns that stick, heavy persistent rainfall etc) and aurorae are visual and sometimes viewed with awe and wonder.

At www.gks.uk.com/Apophis-Apep-Serpent/ there are some new images. Scroll down to near the bottom and you will see photographs of the Jet Stream overhead from a variety of locations. As such, these were pictures taken in modern situations but what might the jet stream have looked like in enhanced atmospheric conditions. For example, one picture shows an ash cloud from a volcano drifing into the jet stream and darkening it. What might happen during a catastrophic episode?